Augmented display from conversational monitoring

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are provided for generating for display an indication of a segment of media content relevant to a voice communication. This may be accomplished by a media guidance application that monitors a voice communication between users. The media up guidance application determines that a first user is describing media content. In response to determining that the first user is describing the media content, the media guidance application retrieves media asset viewing history of the first user. The media guidance application determines, based on metadata of each media asset in the media asset viewing history of the first user and the voice communication, a media asset that the first user is describing. The media guidance application determines, based on metadata of the media asset, a segment of the media asset that the first user is describing. The media guidance application generates, for display, an indication of the segment.

BACKGROUND

Viewers often want to discuss exciting and interesting media contentwith friends and colleagues. Viewers may have conversations in person oracross the digital divide with friends and family, and may want to sharea show, clip, episode, or highlight with another other person who hasnot seen the same content. Even if the other person has seen the sameevent, a viewer may want to talk through a highlight, or the otherperson may have watched a different presentation of the event orotherwise missed a segment of the media content the viewer isdiscussing. If a viewer is forced to use conventional interfaces toselect a desired segment, the viewer may lose the moment and excitementleading to subpar experiences and disinterest in the conversation.Viewers, therefore, desire mechanisms for sharing media content, andparticular segments of that content, with friends and colleagues duringconversations related to that content.

SUMMARY

The integration of media into daily life has increased the ability forusers to share experiences, particularly experiences related to theenjoyment of media consumption, with others, both in person and acrossdistances. In particular, media systems may provide mechanisms for usersto share links to media content, including segments of media content.For example, a user may select a hyperlink of a YouTube® video or evento a particular time segment in a YouTube® video. However, while mediasystems are able to display content when a recipient clicks a link, thesystems still fail to overcome problems associated with sharing mediacontent, such as: (i) the amount of media content can be overwhelmingand it can be difficult to find a desired segment of content to share;(ii) interfaces to share media content can be confusing and difficult touse, especially when users are engaged in conversations and don't wantto focus on controlling their user device.

Accordingly, to overcome the problems created when attempting to sharemedia content with another party, methods and systems are described forgenerating for display an indication of a segment of media contentrelevant to a voice communication between two users. Specifically, amedia guidance application renders visual indicators to a target userabout segments that a source user is trying to discuss with the targetuser. While counter to the prevailing systems, which rely solely on thesource user selecting specific time portions of a segment of a mediaasset, the media guidance application use a novel, hybrid approach thatrelies on keywords of a conversation in combination with the sourceuser's viewing history to select the appropriate portion of a mediaasset to share with the target user.

For example, the media guidance application generates for display anindication of a segment of media content relevant to a voicecommunication between two users. The media guidance application doesthis by monitoring a voice communication between a first user (i.e., asource user) at a first communication device (e.g., a smartphone) and asecond user (i.e., a target user) at a second communication device(e.g., a smartphone). For example, the first user may be discussing arecent sporting event (e.g., when the Washington Capitals won the 2018Stanley Cup Championship) with a second user. The media guidanceapplication may extract from the voice communication words spoken by thefirst user. For example, the source user may ask the target user, “Didyou see Ovi lift the cup?” which is a reference to the Capitals'captain, Alexander Ovechkin, lifting the champion trophy. In thisexample, the second user may not have seen that event, and the firstuser may desire to share a particular segment of the event with thesecond user. By monitoring a conversation between two users, the mediaguidance application can locate the media asset of interest, e.g., areplay of the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Championship).

The media guidance application may compare words from the users'conversation with keywords that indicate that media content is beingdescribed. For example, the media guidance application may extract thewords “did you see” from the conversation which suggests that mediacontent is being described. The media guidance application may beconfigured with other trigger words that indicate media content is beingdescribed. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may relyon trainable models that identify various conversation patternsindicating that users are discussing media content. In some embodiments,the media guidance application may retrieve pertinent keywords,trainable models, parameters, and/or speech patterns from a remoteserver and update a local data store with updated keywords, trainablemodels, parameters, and/or speech patterns. The media guidanceapplication may also learn over time the specific speech patterns of auser that correlate with discussions of media content. For example, themedia guidance application may ask the user to confirm that mediacontent is being discussed, and if the user confirms that media contentis being discussed, then the media guidance application may update thespecific parameters used when interacting with that user. Thosecustomized parameters may be stored in a remote server in conjunctionwith an identifier of the user. The media guidance application may,based on the comparison, determine that the first user is describing amedia content. For example, the media guidance application may correlatethe users' conversation with trigger words.

If the first user is describing media content, the media guidanceapplication may respond by identifying a portion of the media content toshare. The media guidance application may retrieve metadata for severalmedia assets that the first user previously consumed. For example, themedia guidance application may use the first user's viewing history toobtain media assets that were viewed in the past day, week, month, oryear and pull metadata for those media assets that provide descriptivecontent. By using this information, the media guidance application mayidentify relevant media content without requiring the user interactingwith complicated user menus across large media choices. In the exampleof the user having watched the final game of the Stanley Cup Finals, themedia guidance application would retrieve metadata associated with thatshowing, for example, a list of words including: “NHL,” “hockey”,“Washington D.C.,” “Las Vegas,” “Stanley Cup,” “Capitals,” “Ovechkin,”“Marc Andre-Fleury”, “Golden Knights”, “lift”, etc. The media guidanceapplication would retrieve metadata for each of the media assets in theuser's viewing history being considered as a possible match. The mediaguidance application may compare the metadata of each media asset in theuser's watch list to a plurality of words extracted from theconversation. In this case, “cup” has a correlation with “Stanley Cup”in the metadata from the first user's watch list. The first user's watchlist may also contain entries for other media assets with metadata thatcorrelate with words extracted from the conversation, e.g., a “World CupSoccer” match and “Operating Vehicle Impaired (“OVI”) Laws” summaryvideo.

The media guidance application may determine, based on comparing themetadata of each media asset with the extracted words, a media assetthat the first user is describing. For example, “lift,” “Ovi,” and “cup”may be found as weighted matches from the users' conversation withmetadata about the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. The mediaguidance application may also retrieve metadata entries corresponding todifferent segments of the matching media asset. For example, a portionof the media asset marked from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may have associatedmetadata marking the segment as “Alexander Ovechkin lifts the StanleyCup.” The media guidance application may determine a segment of themedia asset that the first user is describing based on the associatedmetadata. For example, the media guidance application may match “lift,”“Ovi,” and “cup” with the metadata of the segment. The media guidanceapplication may generate, for display to the second user, an indicationof the segment. For example, the media guidance application may presenta link to the second user to watch a particular segment of theidentified media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare thewords extracted from the users' conversation the according to thefollowing. The media guidance application may select a first word fromthe conversation words. For example, the media guidance application mayselect “see” from the extracted words. The media guidance applicationmay compare the selected word to each keyword. For example, the mediaguidance application may be configured to consider the word “see” to bea keyword suggesting that media content is being described. The mediaguidance application may determine, based on comparing the first word ofthe extracted words with each keyword of the keywords, whether the firstword matches any of the plurality of keywords. In response todetermining that the first word matches a keyword from the plurality ofkeywords, updating a word matching score. For example, the mediaguidance application may utilize a scoring metric, e.g., the wordmatching score, to track how many keywords are matched in theconversation, and/or what weight to give the matching words, todetermine whether the user is discussing media content. This maycomprise a simple count of extracted conversation words that match thetrigger keywords or may comprise a more complex weighted value system.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve aweight associated with the first keyword. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that the word “did” has a relativelylow weight, e.g., 0.01, the word “you” has an equally low weight, e.g.,0.01, and “see” has a relatively moderate weigh of 0.30. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may analyze the weight ofphrases as well. For example, the media guidance application mayconsider “did you see” to have a moderately high rate of, e.g., 0.80.The media guidance application may update the word matching score withthe weight associated with the first keyword.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines whetherthe word matching score is greater than a threshold value. For example,the media guidance application may determine that a score of less than0.10 does not meet a threshold needed to consider the conversation isindicating the user is discussing media content. In response todetermining that the word matching score is greater than the thresholdvalue, the media guidance application determines that the first user isdescribing media content.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application retrieves metadatafor each of the plurality of media assets that the first user previouslyconsumed is achieved according to the following. The media guidanceapplication may transmit, to a profile server, a request for a mediaasset viewing history of the first user. For example, the media guidanceapplication may identify a user according to the user's name, logininformation (e.g., username and/or e-mail address), account information,or other unique identifier. The media guidance application may contact aremote server, e.g., a web server, API host, database server, or othersystem with information requesting a user's viewing history. Forexample, the media guidance application may utilize a JSON (JavascriptObject Notation) request sent to a web application programming interfacethat specifies the information being sent, e.g., viewing history, andidentifier of the user, e.g., the first user. In some embodiments, themedia guidance application may also include a time period for which theinformation is sought, e.g., 24 hours. The media guidance applicationmay receive, in response to the request for the media asset viewinghistory, a plurality of media asset identifiers, wherein each of theplurality of media asset identifiers identifies a media asset the firstuser has previously consumed. For example, the media guidanceapplication may receive a JSON response with a list of titles, or uniqueIDs. The media guidance application may then transmit, to a metadatarepository for each of the plurality of media asset identifiers, arequest for metadata corresponding to the media assets. For example, themedia guidance application may request, using a JSON API request,information describing each media asset in the user's history from aserver that houses such information. In response to the request for thecorresponding metadata, the media guidance application may receive acorresponding data structure associated with the corresponding metadata.For example, the media guidance application may receive list of arraysof strings, e.g., metadata, that describe the requested media assets inassociation, e.g., as key-value pairs, with identifiers for each mediaasset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines the mediaasset that a user is describing based on comparing the metadata of eachmedia asset in the user's history with the words extracted from theuser's conversation. For example, the media guidance application maycalculate the amount of extracted words from the user's conversationthat match metadata of each media asset. For example, if the mediaguidance application extracts “Ovi,” “lift,” and “cup” from theconversation between a first and second user and matches “lifts” and“cup” with metadata for the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals,then the media guidance application would have a count of 2. The mediaguidance application may also match “OVI” with a video that summarizes“Operating Vehicle Impaired (“OVI”) laws” with a count of 1 and maymatch “cup” with a “World Cup” match with a count of 1. The mediaguidance application may determine the media asset that the first useris describing based on the calculated amount of words for eachcorresponding media asset. Carrying through the prior example, the countof 2 for the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup finals may be greaterthan the number of matches for other media assets, e.g., a count of 1.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines, based onsegment metadata associated with different segments of a media asset,the segment of the media asset that the first user is describingaccording to the following. The media guidance application may comparetext of each metadata entry that corresponds with a different segment ofthe identified media asset with the words extracted from the user'sconversation. For example, metadata associated with the first period ofthe final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals may indicate the score ofthe game at different moments, highlights of goals scored, penaltiestaken, big hits, and other pertinent moments in the action. Metadataassociated with, for illustrative purposes, the segment of the finalgame from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may have associated metadata marking thesegment as “Alexander Ovechkin (“Ovi”) lifts the Stanley Cup.” The mediaguidance application may identify a metadata entry with a largest amountof words matching the extracted words. For example, if the mediaguidance application extracts the words “Ovi”, “lift”, and “cup” fromthe user's conversation, then the metadata associated with the segmentof the final game from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may match three words ascompared to other segments of the final game having metadata matchingfewer words. The media guidance application may then select the segmentcorresponding to the metadata entry with the largest amount of wordsmatching the plurality of words.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application generates fordisplay, to the second user, the indication of the segment based on adevice associated with the second, i.e., target user. The media guidanceapplication may identify an electronic device associated with the seconduser. For example, the media guidance application may access arepository of information identifying various devices in use by thetarget user, e.g., a mobile phone, a set-top box, a tablet, a personalcomputer, etc. In some embodiments, the media guidance application mayidentify the electronic device in use by the target user based on thetarget user being logged in to the electronic device. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may use network discovery toidentify electronic devices in communication with a user device in useby the target user. The media guidance application may generate fordisplay the indication of the segment on the electronic device. Forexample, the media guidance application may display a link to thesegment on the target user's phone.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may obtainconfirmation that the segment of the media asset was correctlyidentified. The media guidance application may transmit, to the firstuser at the first device, a request to confirm that the segment wascorrectly identified. For example, the media guidance application maytransmit a query to the first user on a device in use by the first user,e.g., a smartphone, that describes the segment identified, e.g.,“Ovechkin lift the Stanley Cup” or the time markers of the identifiedsegment, e.g., 3:48:05 to 3:52:02. The media guidance application maythen receive, in response to the request to confirm, a response from thefirst user. For example, the media guidance application may receive adata communication from the user's cellular phone that indicates “yes”or “no” for whether the identified segment was the segment the sourceuser intended to share with the target user.

The media guidance application may determine whether the response fromthe first user indicates that the segment was correctly identified. Andin response to determining that the segment was not correctlyidentified, the media guidance application transmits to the first user arequest to identify the correct media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may transmit a list of candidate segments from amedia asset with a largest amount of metadata matching the wordsextracted from the conversation between the users.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application extracts keywordsfrom a voice conversation between a source user and a target user. Themedia guidance application may calculate a relevance score for mediaassets listed in a viewing history of the source user. For example, themedia guidance application may determine the relevance each media assetin the viewing history to the extracted keywords. The media guidanceapplication may select a playback media asset from the plurality ofmedia assets listed in the viewing history of the source user based onselecting the media asset with the highest relevance score. The mediaguidance application may retrieve data indicative of interactions madeby the source user with the playback media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may retrieve a history of commands made by thesource user to the media guidance application during viewing of theplayback media asset. The media guidance application may determine arelevant portion of the playback media asset based on the dataindicative of the interactions made by the source user with the playbackmedia asset. The media guidance application may then transmit therelevant portion of the playback media asset to a user device associatedwith the target user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application calculates arelevance score for each of the plurality of media assets according tothe following process. The media guidance application may retrieveattributes of respective media assets, and, for each of the extractedkeywords from the user's conversation, perform the following operations.The media guidance application may calculate a similarity score betweenthe respective keyword and each of the attributes. The media guidanceapplication may determine whether a calculated similarity score exceedsa threshold score, for example, the similarity score between anattribute of the media asset and an extracted keyword calculated basedon natural language processing, e.g., latent semantic analysis. If thatscore is higher than a threshold configured in the media guidanceapplication, then the keyword is considered relevant to the media asset.In response to determining that the calculated similarity score exceedsthe threshold score, the media guidance application may add thecalculated similarity score to the relevance score.

In some embodiments, the data indicative of interactions made by thesource user with the playback media asset indicates the user interactedwith the playback media asset in a trick play mode of operation. Forexample, the media guidance application may use data indicating that asource user played back one or more portions of the playback media assetin slow motion playback. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may analyze interaction data to determine whether the sourceuser replayed specific portions of the playback media asset duringviewing and determine how many times the source user replayed thoseportions. In response to determining that the data indicative ofinteractions made by the source user with the playback media assetindicates the source user replayed portions of the playback media assetduring viewing, the media guidance application may determine a segmentof the playback media asset.

For example, the media guidance application may identify a first timepoint of the playback media asset corresponding with a start time of aportion of the playback media asset which the source user replayed andidentify a second time point of the playback media asset correspondingwith an end time of the portion of the playback media asset which thesource user replayed. The media guidance application may determine thenumber of times the source user replayed the specific portion of theplayback media asset between the start time and the end time. Based onthat information, the media guidance application may determine therelevant portion of the playback media asset based on the dataindicative of the interactions made by the source user with the playbackmedia asset by selecting a replayed portion of the playback media assetthat was replayed by the source user a larger number of times than otherportions of the playback media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve socialmedia data indicative of social media interactions made by the sourceuser while viewing the playback media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may extract social media data from the dataindicative of interactions made by the source user with the playbackmedia asset. The media guidance application may then identify portionsof the playback media asset that the source user shared on social media.For example, the media guidance application may correlate the socialmedia data with the data indicative of interactions made by the sourceuser with the playback media asset. In some embodiments, the mediaguidance application identifies candidate portions of the playback mediaasset associated with social media data indicative of social mediainteractions that were correlated with the data indicative ofinteractions made by the source user with the playback media asset. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that the sourceuser shared a portion of the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup with hissocial media circle. The media guidance application may then select oneof the candidate portions of the playback media asset that is associatedwith more social media interactions made by the source user as comparedto other candidate portions of the playback media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application identifies candidateportions of the playback media asset associated with interactions madeby the source user with the playback media asset. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve preferences of the target user and compare thepreference of the target user with attributes of the candidate portionsof the playback media asset. The media guidance application may thenselect the relevant portion of the playback media asset from thecandidate portions based on the comparison of the preference of thetarget user with attributes of the candidate portions of the playbackmedia asset. In some embodiments, the media guidance application selectsa user device from a plurality of user devices based on the targetuser's preferences for watching content similar to the portion on aspecific device.

It should also be noted that the systems and/or methods described abovemay be applied to, or used in accordance with, other systems and/ormethods.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other objects and advantages of the disclosure will beapparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, takenin conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like referencecharacters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:

FIGS. 1A and 1B depict illustrative embodiments of a media guidanceapplication that generate, for display, an indication of a segment ofmedia content relevant to a communication between two users, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system, in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system, in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 4 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for generating,for display, an indication of a segment of media content relevant to acommunication between two users, in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure;

FIG. 5 depicts another illustrative flowchart of a process forgenerating, for display, an indication of a segment of media contentrelevant to a communication between two users, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 6 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for comparingwords extracted from a user conversation with keywords that indicatemedia content is being discussed, in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure;

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for determiningwhether a source user is describing media content in a userconversation, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 8 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for retrievingmetadata about media assets in a source user's viewing history, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 9 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for determining amedia asset being described by a source user in a conversation, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 10 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for determining asegment of a media asset being described by a source user in aconversation, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure; and

FIG. 11 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for generating,for display to a target user, an indication of a segment of a mediaasset being described by a source user in a conversation, in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

For example, a media guidance application, using control circuitry,generates for display an indication of a segment of media contentrelevant to a voice communication between two users. The media guidanceapplication does this by monitoring a voice communication between afirst user (i.e., a source user) at a first communication device (e.g.,a smartphone) and a second user (i.e., a target user) at a secondcommunication device (e.g., a smartphone). For example, the first usermay be discussing a recent sporting event (e.g., when the WashingtonCapitals won the 2018 Stanley Cup Championship) with a second user. Themedia guidance application may extract from the voice communicationwords spoken by the first user. For example, the source user may ask thetarget user, “Did you see Ovi lift the cup?” which is a reference to theCapitals' captain, Alexander Ovechkin, lifting the champion trophy. Inthis example, the second user may not have seen that event, and thefirst user may desire to share a particular segment of the event withthe second user. By monitoring a conversation between two users, themedia guidance application locates the media asset of interest, e.g., areplay of the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Championship).

FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B depict illustrative embodiments of a media guidanceapplication that generate, for display, an indication of a segment ofmedia content relevant to a voice communication between two users, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. For example, asource user 100 may be in conversation with a target user 110 and thesource user 100 may ask “Did you see Ovi lift the cup?”, referring toAlexander Ovechkin lifting the Stanley Cup after the final game of the2018 Stanley Cup Championship between the Washington Capitals and theLas Vegas Golden Knights.

As depicted in FIG. 1A, the media guidance application may be monitoringthe voice communication between a source user 100, at a firstcommunication device 105, and the target user 110 at a secondcommunication device 115. For example, the source user 100 and thetarget user 110 may be communicating on cellular phones, smartphones,tablets, personal computers, teleconference, or other suitablecommunications means. In some embodiments, the users may alsocommunicate by text message and the media guidance application maymonitor textual communications; e.g., text message, instant message,electronic mail. The source user's 100 communication device 105 maycommunicate wireless with an access point 108 that relays communicationsto the target user's 110 communication device 115. For example, theaccess point 108 may be a cellular tower providing 4G communication withthe communication device 105 which communicates through atelecommunication system, such as a nationwide network or through theInternet. The access point 108 may be a WiFi access point or any othersufficient communication medium. In some embodiments, the communicationdevice 105 may be wired to a communication device rather than, asdepicted, communicating wirelessly.

As depicted in FIG. 1B, the media guidance application may be monitoringthe voice communication between a source user 100 and a target user 110that are communicating directly between one another, i.e., in the sameroom. In such a scenario, the media guidance application may monitor thecommunication using a third device, i.e., a passive listening devicesuch as user equipment 140. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may monitor the communication using a communication deviceof one of the users, e.g., communication device 105. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may rely audio signalscaptured through a microphone to a remote server or other device thatimplements the media guidance application. In some embodiments, themedia guidance application may be implemented by the passive listeningdevice, e.g., user equipment 140.

The media guidance application may determine, based on the voicecommunication, that the source user 100 is describing media content. Forexample, the media guidance application may obtain audio recorded by amicrophone in a communication device, passive listening device, or othercommunication device. The media guidance application may extractkeywords from the conversation that indicate the source user 100 isdescribing something the source user 100 has seen. In some embodiments,the media guidance application may analyze speech using speechrecognition algorithms to extract the pertinent features from the audioof the conversation. The media guidance application may give each of thepertinent features of a conversation a weight, Wx, according to theimportance of that feature. The media guidance application may extractparts of the speech by using syntactical and semantic parsing and usinga data source of pertinent text. The media guidance application may givethe different extracted features different weights using part-of-speech(“POS”) tagging or other natural language processing approaches.Further, the media guidance application may give phrases from predefinedindexes other weights. The media guidance application may comparephrases, e.g., sets of words occurring between stop words, also calledn-grams, with known phrases from a database of pertinent phrases.

In response to determining that the source user 100 is describing themedia content, the media guidance application may retrieve a media assetviewing history of the source user 100. For example, the media guidanceapplication may contact a remote server to access a user profile of thesource user 100 that includes a log of all media content consumedthrough a specific media service, e.g., YouTube. The viewing history maybe obtained via web API and provided as a JSON file. The viewing historymay also be a series of entries in a comma separated value text file, anarray of key-value pairs, an excel data file, a SQLite data file, SQLserver response, or other data set that contains information sufficientto identify media content a user consumed.

The media guidance application may use the conversation between thesource user 100 and the target user 110 to identify a media asset in themedia asset viewing history that is being described by the source user100. For example, if the source user 100 has a viewing history thatincludes the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Championship and theconversation includes the phrase “Did you see Ovi lift the cup?” thenthe media guidance application may match keywords from the conversationwith metadata of the media asset in the viewing history. For example,metadata for the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Championship couldinclude “NHL,” “hockey,” “Washington D.C.,” “Las Vegas,” “Stanley Cup,”“Capitals,” “Ovechkin,” “Marc Andre-Fleury,” “Golden Knights,” “lift,”etc. The media guidance application may correlate “Did you see Ovi Lifethe cup?” by splitting the sentence into words, performingspeech-to-text recognition, and comparing each word to the metadata. Orthe media guidance application may train a model with the metadata ofeach media asset in the user's viewing history to develop a historymodel for that user and then feed the user's speech into the historymodel for that user to determine a media asset that matches the user'sconversation. Further, the media guidance application may continuallyfeed new parts of the conversation into the model to update thepredicted media asset. Moreover, the speech from the target user 110 maybe fed into the model to further refine the prediction of the matchingmedia asset.

The media guidance application may use metadata of the media asset todetermine a segment of the media asset that the source user isdescribing. For example, the media guidance application may detectannotation in the data of the media asset corresponding to differentportions of the media asset. Or the media guidance application mayretrieve annotations from a remote server that correlate events in themedia asset with start and end times in the media asset. The mediaguidance application may transmit an indication of the segment to thetarget user 110. In some embodiments, the media guidance application mayalso be in communication with the communication device 115 of the targetuser 110 and may generate, for display on the communication device 115,the indication of the segment. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate a link to the segment of the media asset to bedisplayed to the target user.

The media guidance application may also receive input from the targetuser 110 indicating the target user 110 is commanding the media guidanceapplication to generate playback of the segment on a playback device. Insome embodiments, the playback may be performed on the communicationdevice 115. In some embodiments, the playback may be achieved on adisplay device 125, e.g., a television or computer screen, that is incommunication with the media guidance application or with thecommunication device 115. For example, the communication device 115 maycommunicate through a wireless network 120 with the display device 125using a protocol such AirPlay®, UPnP®, or DLNA® to transmit a stream ofplayback for display.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare wordsfrom the conversation between the source user 100 and target user 110with keywords that indicate that media content is being described. Forexample, the media guidance application may extract the words “did yousee” from the conversation, which suggest that media content is beingdescribed. The media guidance application may be configured with othertrigger words that indicate media content is being described. The mediaguidance application may, based on the comparison, determine that thefirst user is describing media content. For example, the media guidanceapplication may correlate the users' conversation with trigger words.

If the source user 100 is describing media content, the media guidanceapplication may respond by identifying a portion of the media content toshare. The media guidance application may retrieve metadata for severalmedia assets that the source user 100 previously consumed. For example,the media guidance application may use the source user's 100 viewinghistory to obtain media assets that were viewed in the past day, week,month, or year and pull metadata for those media assets that providedescriptive content. For example, the media guidance application mayretrieve a set of data including identifier, media title, and viewingtimestamp such as depicted in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Exemplary Source User Viewing History Id Media Title ViewingTimestamp 984894156 Game 5, 2018 Stanley Cup 6/7/2018 5:00 PM-8:30 PMChampionship 231894132 Legal Education Summary, 6/8/2018 9:00 AM-2:00 PMVehicle Laws 561329813 World Cup Soccer, UEFA 10/5/2017 4:00 PM-4:15 PMGroup C Finals 321987132 Mindhunter 12/1/2017 9:00 PM-10:00 PM

By using this information, the media guidance application may identifyrelevant media content without requiring the source user 100 to interactwith complicated user menus across large media choices. In the exampleof the source user 100 having watched the final game of the Stanley CupFinals, the media guidance application would retrieve metadataassociated with that showing, for example, a list of words including:“NHL,” “hockey,” “Washington D.C.,” “Las Vegas,” “Stanley Cup,”“Capitals,” “Ovechkin,” “Marc Andre-Fleury,” “Golden Knights,” “lift,”etc. The media guidance application may retrieve metadata for each ofthe media assets in the source user's 100 viewing history beingconsidered as a possible match. For example, the media guidanceapplication may retrieve a description of the media asset in associationwith an Id of each media asset as depicted in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Exemplary Metadata of Media Assets from Viewing History IdDescription 984894156 “Watch as Alexander Ovechkin and the WashingtonCapitals defeat Marc Andre-Fleury, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, and 40years of history to finally lift the cup.” 231894132 “This continuinglegal education series focuses on laws needed by lawyers in Californiato defend clients involved in vehicle infractions, traffic stops,reckless driving stops, and OVI (“operating vehicle impaired”) arrest.”561329813 “Germany earns another berth to the World Cup.” 321987132 “Acrime drama based on the book with same name. Watch as the FBIinterviews serial killers, adapts to new psychological techniques, andchallenges the old guard.”

The media guidance application may compare the metadata of each mediaasset in the user's watch list to a plurality of words extracted fromthe conversation. In this case, “cup” has a correlation with “StanleyCup” in the metadata from the source user's 100 watch list. The sourceuser's 100 watch list may also contain entries for other media assetswith metadata that correlate with words extracted from the conversation,e.g., a “World Cup Soccer” match and “Operating Vehicle Impaired (“OVI”)Laws” summary video.

The media guidance application may determine, based on comparing themetadata of each media asset with the extracted words, a media assetthat the source user 100 is describing. For example, “lift,” “Ovi,” and“cup” may be found as weighted matches from the users' conversation withmetadata about the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. The mediaguidance application may also retrieve metadata entries corresponding todifferent segments of the matching media asset. For example, a portionof the media asset marked from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may have associatedmetadata marking the segment as “Alexander Ovechkin lifts the StanleyCup.” The media guidance application may determine a segment of themedia asset that the source user 100 is describing based on theassociated metadata. For example, the media guidance application maymatch “lift”, “Ovi”, and “cup” with the metadata of the segment. Themedia guidance application may generate, for display to the target user110, an indication of the segment. For example, the media guidanceapplication may present a link 116 to the target user 110 to watch aparticular segment of the identified media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare thewords extracted from the users' conversation the according to thefollowing. The media guidance application may select a first word fromthe conversation words. For example, the media guidance application mayselect “see” from the extracted words. The media guidance applicationmay compare the selected word to each keyword. For example, mediaguidance application may be configured to consider the word “see” to bea keyword suggest that media content is being described. The mediaguidance application may determine, based on comparing the first word ofthe extracted words with each keyword of the keywords, whether the firstword matches any of the plurality of keywords. In response todetermining that the first word matches a keyword from the plurality ofkeywords, updating a word matching score. For example, the mediaguidance application may utilize a scoring metric, e.g., the wordmatching score, to track how many keywords are matched in theconversation, and/or what weight to give the matching words, todetermine whether the user is discussing a media content. This maycomprise a simple count of extracted conversation words that match thetrigger keywords or may comprise a more complex weighted value system.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve aweight associated with the first keyword. For example, the mediaguidance application may determine that the word “did” has a relativelylow weight, e.g., 0.01, the word “you” has an equally low weight, e.g.,0.01, and “see” has a relatively moderate weigh of 0.30. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may analyze the weight ofphrases as well. For example, the media guidance application mayconsider “did you see” to have a moderately high rate of, e.g., 0.80.The media guidance application may update the word matching score withthe weight associated with the first keyword.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines whetherthe word matching score is greater than a threshold value. For example,the media guidance application may determine that a score of less than0.10 does not meet a threshold needed to consider the conversation isindicating the user is discussing media content. In response todetermining that the word matching score is greater than the thresholdvalue, the media guidance application determines that the source user100 is describing media content.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application retrieves metadatafor each of the plurality of media assets that the source user 100previously consumed comprised according to the following. The mediaguidance application may transmit, to a profile server, a request formedia asset viewing history of the source user 100. For example, themedia guidance application may identify a user according to the user'sname, login information (e.g., username and/or e-mail address), accountinformation, or other unique identifier. The media guidance applicationmay contact a remote server, e.g., a web server, API host, databaseserver, or other system with information requesting a user's viewinghistory. For example, the media guidance application may utilize a JSON(Javascript Object Notation) request sent to a web applicationprogramming interface that specifies the information being sent, e.g.,viewing history, and identifier of the user, e.g., the source user 100.In some embodiments, the media guidance application may also include atime period for which the information is sought, e.g., 24 hours. Themedia guidance application may receive, in response to the request forthe media asset viewing history, a plurality of media asset identifiers,wherein each of the plurality of media asset identifiers identifies amedia asset the source user 100 has previously consumed. For example,the media guidance application may receive a JSON response with a listof titles, or unique IDs. The media guidance application may thentransmit, to a metadata repository for each of the plurality of mediaasset identifiers, a request for metadata corresponding to the mediaassets. For example, the media guidance application may request, using aJSON API request, information describing each media asset in the user'shistory from a server that houses such information. In response to therequest for the corresponding metadata, the media guidance applicationmay receive a corresponding data structure associated with thecorresponding metadata. For example, the media guidance application mayreceive list of arrays of strings, i.e., metadata, that describe therequested media assets in association, i.e., as key-value pairs, withidentifiers for each media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines the mediaasset that a source user 100 is describing based on comparing themetadata of each media asset in the source user's 100 history with thewords extracted from the source user's 100 conversation. For example,the media guidance application may calculate the amount of extractedwords from the user's conversation that match metadata of each mediaasset. For example, if the media guidance application extracts “Ovi,”“lifts,” and “cup” from the conversation between a source user 100 andtarget user 110 and matches “lifts” and “cup” with metadata for thefinal game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals, then the media guidanceapplication would have a count of 2. The media guidance application mayalso match “OVI” with a video that summarizes “Operating VehicleImpaired (“OVI”) laws” with a count of 1 and may match “cup” with a“World Cup” match with a count of 1. The media guidance application maydetermine the media asset that the source user 100 is describing basedon the calculated amount of words for each corresponding media asset.Carrying through the prior example, the count of 2 for the final game ofthe 2018 Stanley Cup finals may be greater than the number of matchesfor other media assets, e.g., count of 1.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application determines, based onsegment metadata associated with different segments of a media asset,the segment of the media asset that the source user 100 is describingaccording to the following. The media guidance application may comparetext of each metadata entry that corresponds with a different segment ofthe identified media asset with the words extracted from the user'sconversation. For example, metadata associated with the first period ofthe final game of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals may indicate the score ofthe game at different moments, highlights of goals scored, penaltiestaken, big hits, and other pertinent moments in the action. Metadataassociated with, for illustrative purposes, the segment of the finalgame from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may have associated metadata marking thesegment as “Alexander Ovechkin (“Ovi”) lifts the Stanley Cup.” The mediaguidance application may identify a metadata entry with a largest amountof words matching the extracted words. For example, if the mediaguidance application extracts the words “Ovi,” “lift,” and “cup” fromthe source user's 100 conversation, then the metadata associated withthe segment of the final game from 3:48:05 to 3:52:02 may match threewords as compared to other segments of the final game having metadatamatching fewer words. The media guidance application may then select thesegment corresponding to the metadata entry with the largest amount ofwords matching the plurality of words.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application generates fordisplay, to the target user 110, the indication of the segment based ona device associated with the second, i.e., target user. The mediaguidance application may identify an electronic device, e.g.,communication device 115, associated with the target user 110. Forexample, the media guidance application may access a repository ofinformation identifying various devices in use by the target user 110,e.g., a mobile phone 115, a set-top box, a tablet, a personal computer,a television 125, etc. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may identify the electronic device in use by the target user110 based on the target user 110 being logged in to the electronicdevice. In some embodiments, the media guidance application may usenetwork discovery to identify electronic devices in communication with auser device in use by the target user 110. The media guidanceapplication may generate for display the indication of the segment onthe electronic device, e.g., communication device 115. For example, themedia guidance application may display a link to the segment on thetarget user's 110 phone 115.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may obtainconfirmation that the segment of the media asset was correctlyidentified. The media guidance application may transmit, to the sourceuser 100 at the first device 105, a request to confirm that the segmentwas correctly identified. For example, the media guidance applicationmay transmit a query to the source user 100 on a device 105 in use bythe source user 100, e.g., a smartphone, that describes the segmentidentified, e.g., “Ovechkin lift the Stanley Cup” or the time markers ofthe identified segment, e.g., 3:48:05 to 3:52:02. The query may be atext message to be displayed on the communication device 105, a yes/noprompt, a short clip playing the identified segment, a voice prompt, orany input/output method for obtaining user input. The media guidanceapplication may then receive, in response to the request to confirm, aresponse from the source user 100. For example, the media guidanceapplication may receive a data communication from the user's cellularphone that indicates “yes” or “no” for whether the identified segmentwas the segment the source user intended to share with the target user.

The media guidance application may determine whether the response fromthe source user 100 indicates that the segment was correctly identified.And in response to determining that the segment was not correctlyidentified, the media guidance application transmits to the source user100 a request to identify the correct media asset. For example, themedia guidance application may transmit a list 106 of candidate segmentsfrom a media asset with a largest amount of metadata matching the wordsextracted from the conversation between the users. The media guidanceapplication may then receive a selection 107 of the correct media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application extracts keywordsfrom a conversation between a source user 100 and a target user 110. Themedia guidance application may calculate a relevance score for mediaassets listed in a viewing history of the source user 100. For example,the media guidance application may determine the relevance each mediaasset in the viewing history to the extracted keywords. The mediaguidance application may select a playback media asset from theplurality of media assets listed in the viewing history of the sourceuser 100 based on selecting the media asset with the highest relevancescore. The media guidance application may retrieve data indicative ofinteractions made by the source user 100 with the playback media asset.For example, the media guidance application may retrieve a history ofcommands made by the source user 100 to the media guidance applicationduring viewing of the playback media asset. The media guidanceapplication may determine a relevant portion of the playback media assetbased on the data indicative of the interactions made by the source user100 with the playback media asset. The media guidance application maythen transmit the relevant portion of the playback media asset to a userdevice associated with the target user 110.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application calculates arelevance score for each of the plurality of media assets according tothe following process. The media guidance application may retrieveattributes of respective media assets, and, for each of the extractedkeywords from the user's conversation, perform the following operations.The media guidance application may calculate a similarity score betweenthe respective keyword and each of the attributes. The media guidanceapplication may determine whether a calculated similarity score exceedsa threshold score, for example, the similarity score between anattribute of the media asset and an extracted keyword calculated basedon natural language processing, e.g., latent semantic analysis. If thatscore is higher than a threshold configured in the media guidanceapplication, then the keyword is considered relevant to the media asset.In response to determining that the calculated similarity score exceedsthe threshold score, the media guidance application may add thecalculated similarity score to the relevance score.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application the data indicativeof interactions made by the source user 100 with the playback mediaasset indicates the user interacted with the playback media asset in atrick play mode of operation. For example, the media guidanceapplication may use data indicating that a source user 100 played backone or more portions of the playback media asset in slow motionplayback. In some embodiments, the media guidance application mayanalyze interaction data to determine whether the source user 100replayed specific portions of the playback media asset during viewingand determine how many times the source user 100 replayed thoseportions. In response to determining that the data indicative ofinteractions made by the source user 100 with the playback media assetindicates the source user 100 replayed portions of the playback mediaasset during viewing, the media guidance application may determine asegment of the playback media asset.

For example, the media guidance application may identify a first timepoint of the playback media asset corresponding to a start time of aportion of the playback media asset which the source user 100 replayedand identify a second time point of the playback media assetcorresponding to an end time of the portion of the playback media assetwhich the source user 100 replayed. The media guidance application maydetermine the number of times the source user 100 replayed the specificportion of the playback media asset between the start time and the endtime. Based on that information, the media guidance application maydetermine the relevant portion of the playback media asset based on thedata indicative of the interactions made by the source user 100 with theplayback media asset by selecting a replayed portion of the playbackmedia asset that was replayed by the source user 100 a larger number oftimes than other portions of the playback media asset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve socialmedia data indicative of social media interactions made by the sourceuser 100 while viewing the playback media asset. For example, the mediaguidance application may extract social media data from the dataindicative of interactions made by the source user 100 with the playbackmedia asset. The media guidance application may then identify portionsof the playback media asset that the source user 100 shared on socialmedia. For example, the media guidance application may correlate thesocial media data with the data indicative of interactions made by thesource user 100 with the playback media asset. In some embodiments, themedia guidance application identifies candidate portions of the playbackmedia asset associated with social media data indicative of social mediainteractions that was correlated with the data indicative ofinteractions made by the source user 100 with the playback media asset.For example, the media guidance application may determine that thesource user 100 shared a portion the final game of the 2018 Stanley Cupwith his social media circle. The media guidance application may thenselect one of the candidate portions of the playback media asset that isassociated with more social media interactions made by the source user100 as compared to other candidate portions of the playback media asset.In some embodiments, the media guidance application identifies candidateportions of the playback media asset associated with interactions madeby the source user 100 with the playback media asset. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve preferences of the target user 110 and comparethe preference of the target user 110 with attributes of the candidateportions of the playback media asset. The media guidance application maythen select the relevant portion of the playback media asset from thecandidate portions based on the comparison of the preference of thetarget user 110 with attributes of the candidate portions of theplayback media asset. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication selects a user device from a plurality of user devices basedon the target user's 110 preferences for watching content similar to theportion on a specific device.

Users in a content delivery system desire a form of media guidancethrough an interface that allows users to connect to devices,efficiently navigate content selections, and give executable commands.An application that provides such guidance is referred to herein as aninteractive media guidance application or, sometimes, a media guidanceapplication or a guidance application.

Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms dependingon the content for which they provide guidance. For instance, a mediaguidance application may run in the background of a user equipmentdevice and monitor a user's activity. In response to receiving a usercommand at the user equipment device (e.g., directed towards the mediaguidance application and/or any alternate application), the mediaguidance application may execute various processes that the mediaguidance application is configured to implement. A media guidanceapplication may also be stored on a remote server and may monitorseveral user equipment devices in real-time through the use of awireless/wired connection. The media guidance application may executeprocesses at any of the respective user equipment devices depending onthe user commands received at the respective user equipment devices.

Interactive media guidance applications may generate graphical userinterface screens that enable a user to navigate among, locate andselect content. As referred to herein, the terms “media asset” and“content” should be understood to mean an electronically consumable userasset, such as television programming, as well as pay-per-view programs,on-demand programs (as in video-on-demand (VOD) systems), Internetcontent (e.g., streaming content, downloadable content, Webcasts, etc.),video clips, audio, content information, pictures, rotating images,documents, playlists, websites, articles, books, electronic books,blogs, chat sessions, social media, applications, games, and/or anyother media or multimedia and/or combination of the same. Guidanceapplications also allow users to navigate among and locate content. Asreferred to herein, the term “multimedia” should be understood to meancontent that utilizes at least two different content forms describedabove, for example, text, audio, images, video, or interactivity contentforms. Content may be recorded, played, displayed or accessed by userequipment devices, but can also be part of a live performance.

The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performingany of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded on computerreadable media. Computer readable media includes any media capable ofstoring data. The computer readable media may be transitory, including,but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagnetic signals,or may be non-transitory including, but not limited to, volatile andnon-volatile computer memory or storage devices such as a hard disk,floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media cards, register memory, processorcaches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”), etc.

With the advent of the Internet, mobile computing, and high-speedwireless networks, users are accessing media on user equipment deviceson which they traditionally did not. As referred to herein, the phrase“user equipment device,” “user equipment,” “user device,” “electronicdevice,” “electronic equipment,” “media equipment device,” or “mediadevice” should be understood to mean any device for accessing thecontent described above, such as a television, a Smart TV, a set-topbox, an integrated receiver decoder (IRD) for handling satellitetelevision, a digital storage device, a digital media receiver (DMR), adigital media adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVD player, aDVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAY player, aBLU-RAY recorder, a personal computer (PC), a laptop computer, a tabletcomputer, a WebTV box, a personal computer television (PC/TV), a PCmedia server, a PC media center, a hand-held computer, a stationarytelephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, aportable video player, a portable music player, a portable gamingmachine, a smart phone, or any other television equipment, computingequipment, or wireless device, and/or combination of the same. In someembodiments, the user equipment device may have a front facing screenand a rear facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angledscreens. In some embodiments, the user equipment device may have a frontfacing camera and/or a rear facing camera. On these user equipmentdevices, users may be able to navigate among and locate the same contentavailable through a television. Consequently, media guidance may beavailable on these devices, as well. The guidance provided may be forcontent available only through a television, for content available onlythrough one or more of other types of user equipment devices, or forcontent available both through a television and one or more of the othertypes of user equipment devices. The media guidance applications may beprovided as on-line applications (i.e., provided on a web-site), or asstand-alone applications or clients on user equipment devices. Variousdevices and platforms that may implement media guidance applications aredescribed in more detail below.

One of the functions of the media guidance application is to providemedia guidance data to users. As referred to herein, the phrase “mediaguidance data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any datarelated to content or data used in operating the guidance application.For example, the guidance data may include program information, guidanceapplication settings, user preferences, user profile information, medialistings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcastchannels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parentalcontrol ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information,actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos,etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D,etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type ofguidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locatedesired content selections.

The media guidance application may be personalized based on a user'spreferences. A personalized media guidance application allows a user tocustomize displays and features to create a personalized “experience”with the media guidance application. This personalized experience may becreated by allowing a user to input these customizations and/or by themedia guidance application monitoring user activity to determine varioususer preferences. Users may access their personalized guidanceapplication by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to theguidance application. Customization of the media guidance applicationmay be made in accordance with a user profile. The customizations mayinclude varying presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of displays,font size of text, etc.), aspects of content listings displayed (e.g.,only HDTV or only 3D programming, user-specified broadcast channelsbased on favorite channel selections, re-ordering the display ofchannels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording features (e.g.,recording or series recordings for particular users, recording quality,etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of Internetcontent (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail,electronically delivered articles, etc.) and other desiredcustomizations.

The media guidance application may allow a user to provide user profileinformation or may automatically compile user profile information. Themedia guidance application may, for example, monitor the content theuser accesses and/or other interactions the user may have with theguidance application. Additionally, the media guidance application mayobtain all or part of other user profiles that are related to aparticular user (e.g., from other web sites on the Internet the useraccesses, such as www.Tivo.com, from other media guidance applicationsthe user accesses, from other interactive applications the useraccesses, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.), and/orobtain information about the user from other sources that the mediaguidance application may access. As a result, a user can be providedwith a unified guidance application experience across the user'sdifferent user equipment devices. Additional personalized media guidanceapplication features are described in greater detail in Ellis et al.,U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11,2005, Boyer et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,165,098, issued Jan. 16, 2007, andEllis et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0174430,filed Feb. 21, 2002, which are hereby incorporated by reference hereinin their entireties.

Users may access content and the media guidance application (and itsdisplay screens described above and below) from one or more of theiruser equipment devices. FIG. 2 shows a generalized embodiment ofillustrative user equipment device 200. More specific implementations ofuser equipment devices are discussed below in connection with FIG. 3 .User equipment device 200 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 202. I/O path 202 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 204, which includesprocessing circuitry 206 and storage 208. Control circuitry 204 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 202. I/O path 202 may connect control circuitry 204 (andspecifically processing circuitry 206) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 2 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 204 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 206. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 204 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 208). Specifically, control circuitry 204 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 204 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by controlcircuitry 204 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 204 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above-mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths(which is described in more detail in connection with FIG. 3 ). Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 208 thatis part of control circuitry 204. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 208 may be used tostore various types of content described herein as well as mediaguidance data described above. Nonvolatile memory may also be used(e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions). Cloud-basedstorage, described in relation to FIG. 3 , may be used to supplementstorage 208 or instead of storage 208.

Control circuitry 204 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 204 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of the userequipment 200. Circuitry 204 may also include digital-to-analogconverter circuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry forconverting between digital and analog signals. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may be used by the user equipment device to receive and todisplay, to play, or to record content. The tuning and encodingcircuitry may also be used to receive guidance data. The circuitrydescribed herein, including for example, the tuning, video generating,encoding, decoding, encrypting, decrypting, scaler, and analog/digitalcircuitry, may be implemented using software running on one or moregeneral purpose or specialized processors. Multiple tuners may beprovided to handle simultaneous tuning functions (e.g., watch and recordfunctions, picture-in-picture (PIP) functions, multiple-tuner recording,etc.). If storage 208 is provided as a separate device from userequipment 200, the tuning and encoding circuitry (including multipletuners) may be associated with storage 208.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 204 using user inputinterface 210. User input interface 210 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 212 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of userequipment device 200. For example, display 212 may be a touchscreen ortouch-sensitive display. In such circumstances, user input interface 210may be integrated with or combined with display 212. Display 212 may beone or more of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD)for a mobile device, amorphous silicon display, low temperature polysilicon display, electronic ink display, electrophoretic display, activematrix display, electro-wetting display, electrofluidic display, cathoderay tube display, light-emitting diode display, electroluminescentdisplay, plasma display panel, high-performance addressing display,thin-film transistor display, organic light-emitting diode display,surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), laser television,carbon nanotubes, quantum dot display, interferometric modulatordisplay, or any other suitable equipment for displaying visual images.In some embodiments, display 212 may be HDTV-capable. In someembodiments, display 212 may be a 3D display, and the interactive mediaguidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in 3D. Avideo card or graphics card may generate the output to the display 212.The video card may offer various functions such as accelerated renderingof 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or theability to connect multiple monitors. The video card may be anyprocessing circuitry described above in relation to control circuitry204. The video card may be integrated with the control circuitry 204.Speakers 214 may be provided as integrated with other elements of userequipment device 200 or may be stand-alone units. The audio component ofvideos and other content displayed on display 212 may be played throughspeakers 214. In some embodiments, the audio may be distributed to areceiver (not shown), which processes and outputs the audio via speakers214.

The guidance application may be implemented using any suitablearchitecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone applicationwholly-implemented on user equipment device 200. In such an approach,instructions of the application are stored locally (e.g., in storage208), and data for use by the application is downloaded on a periodicbasis (e.g., from an out-of-band feed, from an Internet resource, orusing another suitable approach). Control circuitry 204 may retrieveinstructions of the application from storage 208 and process theinstructions to generate any of the displays discussed herein. Based onthe processed instructions, control circuitry 204 may determine whataction to perform when input is received from input interface 210. Forexample, movement of a cursor on a display up/down may be indicated bythe processed instructions when input interface 210 indicates that anup/down button was selected.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-serverbased application. Data for use by a thick or thin client implemented onuser equipment device 200 is retrieved on-demand by issuing requests toa server remote to the user equipment device 200. In one example of aclient-server based guidance application, control circuitry 204 runs aweb browser that interprets web pages provided by a remote server. Forexample, the remote server may store the instructions for theapplication in a storage device. The remote server may process thestored instructions using circuitry (e.g., control circuitry 204) andgenerate the displays discussed above and below. The client device mayreceive the displays generated by the remote server and may display thecontent of the displays locally on equipment device 200. This way, theprocessing of the instructions is performed remotely by the server whilethe resulting displays are provided locally on equipment device 200.Equipment device 200 may receive inputs from the user via inputinterface 210 and transmit those inputs to the remote server forprocessing and generating the corresponding displays. For example,equipment device 200 may transmit a communication to the remote serverindicating that an up/down button was selected via input interface 210.The remote server may process instructions in accordance with that inputand generate a display of the application corresponding to the input(e.g., a display that moves a cursor up/down). The generated display isthen transmitted to equipment device 200 for presentation to the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded andinterpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (runby control circuitry 204). In some embodiments, the guidance applicationmay be encoded in the ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received bycontrol circuitry 204 as part of a suitable feed, and interpreted by auser agent running on control circuitry 204. For example, the guidanceapplication may be an EBIF application. In some embodiments, theguidance application may be defined by a series of JAVA-based files thatare received and run by a local virtual machine or other suitablemiddleware executed by control circuitry 204. In some of suchembodiments (e.g., those employing MPEG-2 or other digital mediaencoding schemes), the guidance application may be, for example, encodedand transmitted in an MPEG-2 object carousel with the MPEG audio andvideo packets of a program.

User equipment device 200 of FIG. 2 can be implemented in system 300 ofFIG. 3 as user television equipment 302, user computer equipment 304,wireless user communications device 306, or any other type of userequipment suitable for accessing content, such as a non-portable gamingmachine. For simplicity, these devices may be referred to hereincollectively as user equipment or user equipment devices, and may besubstantially similar to user equipment devices described above. Userequipment devices, on which a media guidance application may beimplemented, may function as a standalone device or may be part of anetwork of devices. Various network configurations of devices may beimplemented and are discussed in more detail below.

A user equipment device utilizing at least some of the system featuresdescribed above in connection with FIG. 2 may not be classified solelyas user television equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, or awireless user communications device 306. For example, user televisionequipment 302 may, like some user computer equipment 304, beInternet-enabled allowing for access to Internet content, while usercomputer equipment 304 may, like some television equipment 302, includea tuner allowing for access to television programming. The mediaguidance application may have the same layout on various different typesof user equipment or may be tailored to the display capabilities of theuser equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 304, theguidance application may be provided as a web site accessed by a webbrowser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled downfor wireless user communications devices 306.

In system 300, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 3 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

In some embodiments, a user equipment device (e.g., user televisionequipment 302, user computer equipment 304, wireless user communicationsdevice 306) may be referred to as a “second screen device.” For example,a second screen device may supplement content presented on a first userequipment device. The content presented on the second screen device maybe any suitable content that supplements the content presented on thefirst device. In some embodiments, the second screen device provides aninterface for adjusting settings and display preferences of the firstdevice. In some embodiments, the second screen device is configured forinteracting with other second screen devices or for interacting with asocial network. The second screen device can be located in the same roomas the first device, a different room from the first device but in thesame house or building, or in a different building from the firstdevice.

The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent mediaguidance application settings across in-home devices and remote devices.Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and programfavorites, programming preferences that the guidance applicationutilizes to make programming recommendations, display preferences, andother desirable guidance settings. For example, if a user sets a channelas a favorite on, for example, the web site www.Tivo.com on theirpersonal computer at their office, the same channel would appear as afavorite on the user's in-home devices (e.g., user television equipmentand user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile devices, ifdesired. Therefore, changes made on one user equipment device can changethe guidance experience on another user equipment device, regardless ofwhether they are the same or a different type of user equipment device.In addition, the changes made may be based on settings input by a user,as well as user activity monitored by the guidance application.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network 314.Namely, user television equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, andwireless user communications device 306 are coupled to communicationsnetwork 314 via communications paths 308, 310, and 312, respectively.Communications network 314 may be one or more networks including theInternet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice or data network (e.g., a4G or LTE network), cable network, public switched telephone network, orother types of communications network or combinations of communicationsnetworks. Paths 308, 310, and 312 may separately or together include oneor more communications paths, such as, a satellite path, a fiber-opticpath, a cable path, a path that supports Internet communications (e.g.,IPTV), free-space connections (e.g., for broadcast or other wirelesssignals), or any other suitable wired or wireless communications path orcombination of such paths. Path 312 is drawn with dotted lines toindicate that in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 3 it is awireless path and paths 308 and 310 are drawn as solid lines to indicatethey are wired paths (although these paths may be wireless paths, ifdesired). Communications with the user equipment devices may be providedby one or more of these communications paths, but are shown as a singlepath in FIG. 3 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 308, 310, and 312, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 314.

System 300 includes content source 316 and media guidance data source318 coupled to communications network 314 via communication paths 320and 322, respectively. Paths 320 and 322 may include any of thecommunication paths described above in connection with paths 308, 310,and 312. Communications with the content source 316 and media guidancedata source 318 may be exchanged over one or more communications paths,but are shown as a single path in FIG. 3 to avoid overcomplicating thedrawing. In addition, there may be more than one of each of contentsource 316 and media guidance data source 318, but only one of each isshown in FIG. 3 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing. (The differenttypes of each of these sources are discussed below.) If desired, contentsource 316 and media guidance data source 318 may be integrated as onesource device. Although communications between sources 316 and 318 withuser equipment devices 302, 304, and 306 are shown as throughcommunications network 314, in some embodiments, sources 316 and 318 maycommunicate directly with user equipment devices 302, 304, and 306 viacommunication paths (not shown) such as those described above inconnection with paths 308, 310, and 312.

Content source 316 may include one or more types of content distributionequipment including a television distribution facility, cable systemheadend, satellite distribution facility, programming sources (e.g.,television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.), intermediatedistribution facilities and/or servers, Internet providers, on-demandmedia servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademark owned bythe National Broadcasting Company, Inc., ABC is a trademark owned by theAmerican Broadcasting Company, Inc., and HBO is a trademark owned by theHome Box Office, Inc. Content source 316 may be the originator ofcontent (e.g., a television broadcaster, a Webcast provider, etc.) ormay not be the originator of content (e.g., an on-demand contentprovider, an Internet provider of content of broadcast programs fordownloading, etc.). Content source 316 may include cable sources,satellite providers, on-demand providers, Internet providers,over-the-top content providers, or other providers of content. Contentsource 316 may also include a remote media server used to storedifferent types of content (including video content selected by a user),in a location remote from any of the user equipment devices. Systems andmethods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely storedcontent to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connectionwith Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892, issued Jul. 20, 2010, whichis hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Media guidance data source 318 may provide media guidance data, such asthe media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may beprovided to the user equipment devices using any suitable approach. Insome embodiments, the guidance application may be a stand-aloneinteractive television program guide that receives program guide datavia a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). Programschedule data and other guidance data may be provided to the userequipment on a television channel sideband, using an in-band digitalsignal, using an out-of-band digital signal, or by any other suitabledata transmission technique. Program schedule data and other mediaguidance data may be provided to user equipment on multiple analog ordigital television channels.

In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 318may be provided to users' equipment using a client-server approach. Forexample, a user equipment device may pull media guidance data from aserver, or a server may push media guidance data to a user equipmentdevice. In some embodiments, a guidance application client residing onthe user's equipment may initiate sessions with source 318 to obtainguidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is out of dateor when the user equipment device receives a request from the user toreceive data. Media guidance may be provided to the user equipment withany suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, a user-specifiedperiod of time, a system-specified period of time, in response to arequest from user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 318 mayprovide user equipment devices 302, 304, and 306 the media guidanceapplication itself or software updates for the media guidanceapplication.

In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data.For example, the viewer data may include current and/or historical useractivity information (e.g., what content the user typically watches,what times of day the user watches content, whether the user interactswith a social network, at what times the user interacts with a socialnetwork to post information, what types of content the user typicallywatches (e.g., pay TV or free TV), mood, brain activity information,etc.). The media guidance data may also include subscription data. Forexample, the subscription data may identify to which sources or servicesa given user subscribes and/or to which sources or services the givenuser has previously subscribed but later terminated access (e.g.,whether the user subscribes to premium channels, whether the user hasadded a premium level of services, whether the user has increasedInternet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or thesubscription data may identify patterns of a given user for a period ofmore than one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., asurvivor model) used for generating a score that indicates a likelihooda given user will terminate access to a service/source. For example, themedia guidance application may process the viewer data with thesubscription data using the model to generate a value or score thatindicates a likelihood of whether the given user will terminate accessto a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score mayindicate a higher level of confidence that the user will terminateaccess to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the mediaguidance application may generate promotions that entice the user tokeep the particular service or source indicated by the score as one towhich the user will likely terminate access.

Media guidance applications may be, for example, stand-aloneapplications implemented on user equipment devices. For example, themedia guidance application may be implemented as software or a set ofexecutable instructions which may be stored in storage 208, and executedby control circuitry 204 of a user equipment device 200. In someembodiments, media guidance applications may be client-serverapplications where only a client application resides on the userequipment device, and server application resides on a remote server. Forexample, media guidance applications may be implemented partially as aclient application on control circuitry 204 of user equipment device 200and partially on a remote server as a server application (e.g., mediaguidance data source 318) running on control circuitry of the remoteserver. When executed by control circuitry of the remote server (such asmedia guidance data source 318), the media guidance application mayinstruct the control circuitry to generate the guidance applicationdisplays and transmit the generated displays to the user equipmentdevices. The server application may instruct the control circuitry ofthe media guidance data source 318 to transmit data for storage on theuser equipment. The client application may instruct control circuitry ofthe receiving user equipment to generate the guidance applicationdisplays.

Content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices302, 304, and 306 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT contentdelivery allows Internet-enabled user devices, including any userequipment device described above, to receive content that is transferredover the Internet, including any content described above, in addition tocontent received over cable or satellite connections. OTT content isdelivered via an Internet connection provided by an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), but a third party distributes the content. The ISP maynot be responsible for the viewing abilities, copyrights, orredistribution of the content, and may only transfer IP packets providedby the OTT content provider. Examples of OTT content providers includeYOUTUBE, NETFLIX, and HULU, which provide audio and video via IPpackets. Youtube is a trademark owned by Google Inc., Netflix is atrademark owned by Netflix Inc., and Hulu is a trademark owned by Hulu,LLC. OTT content providers may additionally or alternatively providemedia guidance data described above. In addition to content and/or mediaguidance data, providers of OTT content can distribute media guidanceapplications (e.g., web-based applications or cloud-based applications),or the content can be displayed by media guidance applications stored onthe user equipment device.

Media guidance system 300 is intended to illustrate a number ofapproaches, or network configurations, by which user equipment devicesand sources of content and guidance data may communicate with each otherfor the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Theembodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset ofthese approaches, or in a system employing other approaches fordelivering content and providing media guidance. The following fourapproaches provide specific illustrations of the generalized example ofFIG. 3 .

In one approach, user equipment devices may communicate with each otherwithin a home network. User equipment devices can communicate with eachother directly via short-range point-to-point communication schemesdescribed above, via indirect paths through a hub or other similardevice provided on a home network, or via communications network 314.Each of the multiple individuals in a single home may operate differentuser equipment devices on the home network. As a result, it may bedesirable for various media guidance information or settings to becommunicated between the different user equipment devices. For example,it may be desirable for users to maintain consistent media guidanceapplication settings on different user equipment devices within a homenetwork, as described in greater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. PatentPublication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005. Different types ofuser equipment devices in a home network may also communicate with eachother to transmit content. For example, a user may transmit content fromuser computer equipment to a portable video player or portable musicplayer.

In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment bywhich they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, someusers may have home networks that are accessed by in-home and mobiledevices. Users may control in-home devices via a media guidanceapplication implemented on a remote device. For example, users mayaccess an online media guidance application on a website via a personalcomputer at their office, or a mobile device such as a PDA orweb-enabled mobile telephone. The user may set various settings (e.g.,recordings, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidanceapplication to control the user's in-home equipment. The online guidemay control the user's equipment directly, or by communicating with amedia guidance application on the user's in-home equipment. Varioussystems and methods for user equipment devices communicating, where theuser equipment devices are in locations remote from each other, isdiscussed in, for example, Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,046,801, issuedOct. 25, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety.

In a third approach, users of user equipment devices inside and outsidea home can use their media guidance application to communicate directlywith content source 316 to access content. Specifically, within a home,users of user television equipment 302 and user computer equipment 304may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locatedesirable content. Users may also access the media guidance applicationoutside of the home using wireless user communications devices 306 tonavigate among and locate desirable content.

In a fourth approach, user equipment devices may operate in a cloudcomputing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computingenvironment, various types of computing services for content sharing,storage or distribution (e.g., video sharing sites or social networkingsites) are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing andstorage resources, referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloudcan include a collection of server computing devices, which may belocated centrally or at distributed locations, that provide cloud-basedservices to various types of users and devices connected via a networksuch as the Internet via communications network 314. These cloudresources may include one or more content sources 316 and one or moremedia guidance data sources 318. In addition or in the alternative, theremote computing sites may include other user equipment devices, such asuser television equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, and wirelessuser communications device 306. For example, the other user equipmentdevices may provide access to a stored copy of a video or a streamedvideo. In such embodiments, user equipment devices may operate in apeer-to-peer manner without communicating with a central server.

The cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, contentsharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well asaccess to any content described above, for user equipment devices.Services can be provided in the cloud through cloud computing serviceproviders, or through other providers of online services. For example,the cloud-based services can include a content storage service, acontent sharing site, a social networking site, or other services viawhich user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others onconnected devices. These cloud-based services may allow a user equipmentdevice to store content to the cloud and to receive content from thecloud rather than storing content locally and accessing locally-storedcontent.

A user may use various content capture devices, such as camcorders,digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, andhandheld computing devices, to record content. The user can uploadcontent to a content storage service on the cloud either directly, forexample, from user computer equipment 304 or wireless usercommunications device 306 having content capture feature. Alternatively,the user can first transfer the content to a user equipment device, suchas user computer equipment 304. The user equipment device storing thecontent uploads the content to the cloud using a data transmissionservice on communications network 314. In some embodiments, the userequipment device itself is a cloud resource, and other user equipmentdevices can access the content directly from the user equipment deviceon which the user stored the content.

Cloud resources may be accessed by a user equipment device using, forexample, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, and/or any combination of accessapplications of the same. The user equipment device may be a cloudclient that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or theuser equipment device may have some functionality without access tocloud resources. For example, some applications running on the userequipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications deliveredas a service over the Internet, while other applications may be storedand run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a user devicemay receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. Forexample, a user device can stream audio from one cloud resource whiledownloading content from a second cloud resource. Or a user device candownload content from multiple cloud resources for more efficientdownloading. In some embodiments, user equipment devices can use cloudresources for processing operations such as the processing operationsperformed by processing circuitry described in relation to FIG. 2 .

As referred herein, the term “in response to” refers to initiated as aresult of. For example, a first action being performed in response to asecond action may include interstitial steps between the first actionand the second action. As referred herein, the term “directly inresponse to” refers to caused by. For example, a first action beingperformed directly in response to a second action may not includeinterstitial steps between the first action and the second action.

It should be noted that processes 400 and 500 or any step thereof couldbe performed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS. 1-3 .For example, any of processes 400 and 500 may be executed by controlcircuitry 204 (FIG. 2 ) as instructed by control circuitry implementedon user equipment 302, 304, 306 (FIG. 3 ), and/or a user equipmentdevice for selecting a recommendation. In addition, one or more steps ofprocesses 400 and 500 may be incorporated into or combined with one ormore steps of any other process or embodiment.

It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of each of FIGS. 4-11may be used with any other embodiment of this disclosure. In addition,the steps and descriptions described in relation to FIGS. 4-11 may bedone in alternative orders or in parallel to further the purposes ofthis disclosure. For example, each of these steps may be performed inany order or in parallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lagor increase the speed of the system or method. Furthermore, it should benoted that any of the devices or equipment discussed in relation toFIGS. 1-3 could be used to perform one or more of the steps in FIGS.4-11 .

It will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that methodsinvolved in the present invention may be embodied in a computer programproduct that includes a computer-usable and/or readable medium. Forexample, such a computer-usable medium may consist of a read-only memorydevice, such as a CD-ROM disk or conventional ROM device, or a randomaccess memory, such as a hard drive device or a computer diskette,having a computer-readable program code stored thereon. It should alsobe understood that methods, techniques, and processes involved in thepresent disclosure may be executed using processing circuitry. Theprocessing circuitry, for instance, may be a general purpose processor,a customized integrated circuit (e.g., an ASIC), or a field-programmablegate array (FPGA) within user equipment 200, media content source 316,or media guidance data source 318. For example, a profile, as describedherein, may be stored in, and retrieved from, storage 208 of FIG. 2 , ormedia guidance data source 318 of FIG. 3 . Furthermore, processingcircuitry, or a computer program, may update settings of user equipmentstored within storage 208 of FIG. 2 or media guidance data source 318 ofFIG. 3 .

The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and notlimiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of theprocesses discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/orrearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departingfrom the scope of the invention. More generally, the above disclosure ismeant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that follow aremeant to set bounds as to what the present invention includes.Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitationsdescribed in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodimentherein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may becombined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done indifferent orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems andmethods described herein may be performed in real time. It should alsobe noted, the systems and/or methods described above may be applied to,or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.

While some portions of this disclosure may make reference to “relatedart” or “convention,” any such reference is merely for the purpose ofproviding context to the invention(s) of the instant disclosure, anddoes not form any admission as to what constitutes the state of the art.

FIG. 4 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for generating,for display, an indication of a segment of media content relevant to avoice communication between two users, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Process 400, and any of the followingprocesses, may be executed by control circuitry 204 (e.g., in a mannerinstructed to control circuitry 204 by the media guidance application).Control circuitry 204 may be part of user equipment (e.g., a devicewhich may have any or all of the functionality of user televisionequipment 302, user computer equipment 304, and/or wirelesscommunications device 306), or of a remote server communicating from theuser equipment by way of communication network 314, or distributed overa combination of both.

Process 400 begins at 405 where control circuitry 204 monitors a voicecommunication between a first user at a first communication device,e.g., a communication device 105 with the functionality of userequipment 306 and a second user, e.g., target user 110, at a secondcommunication device, e.g., communication device 115 with thefunctionality of user equipment 306.

Process 400 moves to 410, where control circuitry 204 determines, basedon the voice communication, whether the first user is describing a mediaasset. If the control circuitry 204 determines, based on the voicecommunication, that the first user is not describing a media asset, thenprocess 400 is complete at 490. In some embodiments, process 400 runscontinuously until the control circuitry 204 determines that mediacontent is described at 410. If the control circuitry 204 determines,based on the voice communication, that the first user is describing amedia asset, then process 400 continues at 415.

At 415, control circuitry 204 retrieves a media asset viewing history ofthe first user. For example, the control circuitry 204 may usecommunication circuitry to contact a remote server 315 to obtain aprofile of a source user 100. Process 400 continues at 420 with controlcircuitry 204 determining a media asset that the user is describing fromthe user's viewing history. At 425, process 400 continues, where controlcircuitry 204 determines a relevant segment of the media asset based onthe retrieved media asset viewing history of the first user.

Process 400 continues at 430 with control circuitry 204 generating, fordisplay to a second user, an indication of the segment. For example, thecontrol circuitry 204 may generate a link 116 that is displayed to thetarget user 110 on wireless user communication device 306, e.g.,communication device 115.

FIG. 5 depicts another illustrative flowchart of a process forgenerating, for display, an indication of a segment of media contentrelevant to a voice communication between two users, in accordance withsome embodiments of the disclosure. Process 500, and any of thefollowing processes, may be executed by control circuitry 204 (e.g., ina manner instructed to control circuitry 204 by the media guidanceapplication). Control circuitry 204 may be part of user equipment (e.g.,a device which may have any or all of the functionality of usertelevision equipment 302, user computer equipment 304, and/or wirelesscommunications device 306), or of a remote server communicating from theuser equipment by way of communication network 314, or distributed overa combination of both.

Process 500 begins at 505 where control circuitry 204 monitors a voicecommunication between a first user at a first communication device,e.g., a communication device 105 with the functionality of userequipment 306, and a second user, e.g., target user 110, at a secondcommunication device, e.g., communication device 115 with thefunctionality of user equipment 306.

Process 500 moves to 510, where control circuitry 204 extracts from thevoice communication a plurality of words spoken by the first user. At515, control circuitry 204 continues by comparing the plurality of wordswith a plurality of keywords. As described above, the media guidanceapplication may obtain the keywords, for example, from a remote server,configuration, or hardcoded, and the keywords are indicators that theuser is describing media content to a second user.

At 520, the control circuitry 204 determines, based on comparing theplurality of words with the plurality of keywords, whether the firstuser is describing media content. If the first user is not describingmedia content, then process 500 is complete at 590. If control circuitry204 determines that the first user is describing media content, thenprocess 500 continues on to 525.

At 525, control circuitry 204 retrieves metadata for each of a pluralityof media assets that the first user previously consumed. For example,control circuitry 204 may use communication circuitry to obtain metadatafrom an information source 330, media content source 316, media guidancedata source 318, or remote sever 315. At 530, control circuitry 204compares the metadata of each media asset in the plurality of mediaassets that the first user has previously consumed with the plurality ofwords extracted from the voice communication.

Process 500 continues by determining, at 535, based on comparing themetadata of each media asset in the plurality of media assets that thefirst user has previously consumed with the plurality of words, a mediaasset that the first user is describing. At 540, process 500 retrieves aplurality of metadata entries, wherein each of the plurality of metadataentries comprises metadata for each of a plurality of segments of themedia asset that the first user is describing. For example, controlcircuitry 204 may access a media asset and obtain, from within the mediaasset, information about the media asset. In some embodiments, controlcircuitry 204 may use communication circuitry to obtain metadata from aninformation source 330, media content source 316, media guidance datasource 318, or remote sever 315. At 545, control circuitry 204determines, based on the plurality of metadata entries and the pluralityof words, a segment of the media asset that the first user isdescribing.

In some embodiments, control circuitry 204 continues process 500 at 550by transmitting, to the first user at the first device, a request toconfirm that the segment was correctly identified. For example, thecontrol circuitry 204 may use communication circuitry to send an inquiryto communication device 105, including an indication of the segment,that asks the user whether the segment was properly identified. At 555,control circuitry 204 receives a response from the user.

In some embodiments, control circuitry 204 determines whether theresponse from the first user indicates that the segment was correctlyidentified. If the response indicates the segment was properlyidentified, then process 500 may continue at 570. If the responseindicates the segment was not correctly identified, control circuitry204 may continue process 500 by transmitting to the first user a requestto identify the correct media asset. For example, control circuitry 204may send a list of candidate segments as a set of links corresponding toa plurality of segments with a largest amount of metadata matching theplurality of words.

At 570, process 500 continues with control circuitry 204 generating, fordisplay to the second user, an indication of the segment. For example,control circuitry 204 may generate a hyperlink to view the segment on adisplay device.

FIG. 6 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for comparingwords extracted from a user conversation with keywords that indicatemedia content is being discussed, in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure. Process 515A expands 515 of FIG. 5 . Control circuitry204 may continue from 510 at 605 by selecting a first word of theplurality of words extracted from the voice communication. At 610,control circuitry 204 compares the first word of the plurality of wordswith each keyword of the plurality of keywords. Process 515A continuesat 615 where control circuitry 204 determines, based on comparing thefirst word of the plurality of words with each keyword of the pluralityof keywords, whether the first word matches any of the plurality ofkeywords. If the control circuitry 204 determines the first word doesnot match any of the keywords, process 515A continues at 520.

In response to determining that the first word matches a keyword fromthe plurality of keywords, control circuitry 204 updates a word matchingscore at 620. In some embodiments, control circuitry 204 updates theword matching score by retrieving a weight associated with the firstkeyword. For example, control circuitry 204 may use communicationcircuitry to obtain weights from a remote server 315. Or the controlcircuitry 204 may retrieve the weights from storage 208. At 630, thecontrol circuitry 204 may update the word matching score with the weightassociated with the first keyword.

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for determiningwhether a source user is describing media content in a userconversation, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure.Process 520A expands 520 of FIG. 5 . Control circuitry 204 may continuefrom 515. For example, control circuitry 204 may continue by determiningwhether the word matching score is greater than a threshold value. Insome embodiments, control circuitry 204 may retrieve a threshold valuefrom a remote server, e.g., 315, from storage, e.g., 208, or fromhardcoding. The threshold value is used by the control circuitry 204 todetermine whether the control circuitry 204 established a sufficientmatch between words extracted from the users' conversation and thekeywords that indicate media content is being discussed. In response todetermining that the word matching score is greater than the thresholdvalue, the control circuitry 204 determines, at 710, that the first useris describing media content.

FIG. 8 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for retrievingmetadata about media assets in a source user's viewing history, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Process 525A expands525 of FIG. 5 . At 805, control circuitry 204 transmits, to a profileserver, a request for media asset viewing history of the first user,wherein the request comprises an identifier of the first user. Forexample, control circuitry 204 uses communication circuitry to request alog of the media assets the source user 100 viewed in a specified timeperiod, e.g., in the last seven days.

At 810, the control circuitry 204 continues by receiving, in response tothe request for the media asset viewing history, a plurality of mediaasset identifiers. For example, the control circuitry 204 may receive,via communications circuitry, media asset identifiers that identifymedia assets the first user has previously consumed. Process 525Acontinues at 815, where control circuitry 204 transmits, to a metadatarepository for each of the plurality of media asset identifiers, arequest for corresponding metadata. For example, control circuitry 204may communicate with a remote server 315 or information source 330. At820, control circuitry 204 continues process 525A by receiving, inresponse to the request for the corresponding metadata, a correspondingdata structure associated with the corresponding metadata.

FIG. 9 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for retrievingmetadata about media assets in a source user's viewing history, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Process 535A expands535 of FIG. 5 . At 905, control circuitry 204 continues from, forexample, 530 of FIG. 5 by calculating, for each of the plurality ofmedia assets, an amount of words of the plurality of words that match acorresponding media asset. At 910, control circuitry 204 continuesprocess 535A by determining the media asset that the first user isdescribing, based on the calculated amount of words for eachcorresponding media asset.

FIG. 10 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for determining asegment of a media asset being described by a source user in a userconversation, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure.Process 545A expands 545 of FIG. 5 . At 1005, control circuitry 204compares text of each metadata entry of the plurality of metadataentries with each of the plurality of words. At 1010, process 545Acontinues, where control circuitry 204 identifies a metadata entry witha largest amount of words matching the plurality of words. Controlcircuitry 204 continues process 545A at 1015 by selecting the segmentcorresponding to the metadata entry with the largest amount of wordsmatching the plurality of words.

FIG. 11 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for generating,for display to a target user, an indication of a segment of a mediaasset being described by a source user in a user conversation, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Process 570A expands570 of FIG. 5 . At 1105, control circuitry 204 identifies an electronicdevice associated with the second user. For example, the controlcircuitry 204 may contact a remote server that provides services to atarget user 110 to determine which devices are in use by the target user110, e.g., by determining which devices are actively communicating withthe remote server in association with the target user 110. The controlcircuitry 204 continues process 570A at 1110 by generating for displaythe indication of the segment on the electronic device. For example, thecontrol circuitry 204 may generate a link to be displayed on a displaydevice in use by the target user 110.

The above-described embodiments of the present disclosure are presentedfor purposes of illustration and not of limitation, and the presentdisclosure is limited only by the claims that follow. Furthermore, itshould be noted that features and limitations described in any oneembodiment may be applied to any other embodiments herein, andflowcharts or examples relating to any one embodiment may be combinedwith any other embodiments in a suitable manner, done in differentorders, or done in parallel. Furthermore, it should be noted that whilea first step may be based on and/or in response to a second step, such arelationship does not preclude additional steps occurring between thefirst and second steps. In addition, the systems and methods describedherein may be performed in real time. It should also be noted thesystems and/or methods described above may be applied to, or used inaccordance with, other systems and/or methods.

1-50. (canceled)
 51. A method for generating for display an indicationof a segment of media content relevant to a voice communication, themethod comprising: selecting a first word of a plurality of words spokenby a first user during the voice communication between a first user anda second user; comparing the first word of the plurality of words with aplurality of keywords, wherein each of the plurality of keywordsindicate that media content is being described; determining, based onthe comparing, that the first word matches a keyword of the plurality ofkeywords; in response to determining that the first word matches thekeyword, updating a word matching score of the first word with a weightassociated with the keyword; and in response to determining that theword matching score is greater than a threshold value: retrieving, froma metadata repository, metadata corresponding to each of a plurality ofmedia asset identifiers of media assets previously viewed by the firstuser; determining, based on comparing the metadata corresponding to eachof the plurality of media asset identifiers with the first word, a mediaasset that the first user is describing; retrieving metadata for each ofa plurality of segments of the media asset; determining, based on themetadata for each of the plurality of segments and the first word, asegment of the media asset; and generating, for display to the seconduser, the indication of the segment.
 52. The method of claim 51, furthercomprising: transmitting a list of candidate segments from a media assetwith a largest amount of metadata matching the words extracted from theconversation between the first user and second user.
 53. The method ofclaim 51, further comprising: transmitting, to the first user, a requestto confirm that the segment was correctly identified, wherein therequest comprises the indication of the segment; and receiving, inresponse to the request to confirm, a response from the first user. 54.The method of claim 53, further comprising: determining whether theresponse from the first user indicates that the segment was correctlyidentified; and transmitting, in response to determining that thesegment was not correctly identified, to the first user a request toidentify the correct media asset.
 55. The method of claim 51, whereindetermining, based on comparing the metadata corresponding to each ofthe plurality of media asset identifiers with the first word, a mediaasset that the first user is describing comprises: calculating, for eachof the plurality of media assets, an amount of words of the plurality ofwords that match a corresponding media asset; and determining the mediaasset that the first user is describing based on the calculated amountof words for each corresponding media asset.
 56. The method of claim 51,wherein selecting a first word of a plurality of words spoken by a firstuser during the voice communication between a first user and a seconduser comprises: monitoring the voice communication between the firstuser at a first communication device and the second user at a secondcommunication device; and extracting from the voice communication theplurality of words spoken by the first user.
 57. The method of claim 51,wherein a media guidance application retrieves the keywords from aremote server and updates a local data store with updated keywords. 58.The method of claim 51, wherein determining a segment of the media assetcomprises: receiving a corresponding data structure with thecorresponding metadata associated with each of the plurality ofsegments.
 59. The method of claim 51, wherein generating for display, tothe second user, the indication of the segment comprises: identifying anelectronic device associated with the second user; and generating fordisplay the indication of the segment on the electronic device.
 60. Themethod of claim 51, wherein retrieving metadata corresponding to each ofa plurality of media asset identifiers of media assets previously viewedby the first user comprises: transmitting, to a profile server, arequest for a media asset viewing history of the first user, wherein therequest comprises an identifier of the first user; and receiving, inresponse to the request for the media asset viewing history, theplurality of media asset identifiers, wherein each of the plurality ofmedia asset identifiers identifies a media asset the first user haspreviously consumed.
 61. A system for generating for display anindication of a segment of media content relevant to a voicecommunication, the method comprising: communication circuitry; andcontrol circuitry configured to: select a first word of a plurality ofwords spoken by a first user during the voice communication between afirst user and a second user; compare the first word of the plurality ofwords with a plurality of keywords, wherein each of the plurality ofkeywords indicate that media content is being described; determine,based on the comparing, that the first word matches a keyword of theplurality of keywords; in response to determining that the first wordmatches the keyword, update a word matching score of the first word witha weight associated with the keyword; and in response to determiningthat the word matching score is greater than a threshold value:retrieve, from a metadata repository, metadata corresponding to each ofa plurality of media asset identifiers of media assets previously viewedby the first user; determine, based on comparing the metadatacorresponding to each of the plurality of media asset identifiers withthe first word, a media asset that the first user is describing;retrieve metadata for each of a plurality of segments of the mediaasset; determine, based on the metadata for each of the plurality ofsegments and the first word, a segment of the media asset; and generate,for display to the second user, the indication of the segment.
 62. Thesystem of claim 61, wherein the control circuitry is further configuredto: transmit a list of candidate segments from a media asset with alargest amount of metadata matching the words extracted from theconversation between the first user and second user.
 63. The system ofclaim 61, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to:transmit, to the first user, a request to confirm that the segment wascorrectly identified, wherein the request comprises the indication ofthe segment; and receive, in response to the request to confirm, aresponse from the first user.
 64. The system of claim 63, wherein thecontrol circuitry is further configured to: determine whether theresponse from the first user indicates that the segment was correctlyidentified; and transmit, in response to determining that the segmentwas not correctly identified, to the first user a request to identifythe correct media asset.
 65. The system of claim 61, wherein the controlcircuitry is further configured to determine, based on comparing themetadata corresponding to each of the plurality of media assetidentifiers with the first word, a media asset that the first user isdescribing by: calculating, for each of the plurality of media assets,an amount of words of the plurality of words that match a correspondingmedia asset; and determining the media asset that the first user isdescribing based on the calculated amount of words for eachcorresponding media asset.
 66. The system of claim 61, wherein thecontrol circuitry is further configured to select a first word of aplurality of words spoken by a first user during the voice communicationbetween a first user and a second user by: monitoring the voicecommunication between the first user at a first communication device andthe second user at a second communication device; and extracting fromthe voice communication the plurality of words spoken by the first user.67. The system of claim 61, wherein a media guidance applicationretrieves the keywords from a remote server and updates a local datastore with updated keywords.
 68. The system of claim 61, wherein thecontrol circuitry is further configured to determine a segment of themedia asset by: receiving a corresponding data structure with thecorresponding metadata associated with each of the plurality ofsegments.
 69. The system of claim 61, wherein the control circuitry isfurther configured to generate for display, to the second user, theindication of the segment by: identifying an electronic deviceassociated with the second user; and generating for display theindication of the segment on the electronic device.
 70. The system ofclaim 61, wherein the control circuitry is further configured toretrieve metadata corresponding to each of a plurality of media assetidentifiers of media assets previously viewed by the first user by:transmitting, to a profile server, a request for a media asset viewinghistory of the first user, wherein the request comprises an identifierof the first user; and receiving, in response to the request for themedia asset viewing history, the plurality of media asset identifiers,wherein each of the plurality of media asset identifiers identifies amedia asset the first user has previously consumed.